A seasonal city Department of Transportation employee was arrested Thursday for running down a Brooklyn bicyclist and leaving him to die in the street.
Akilo Cadogan was charged with the hit-and-run that claimed the life of Eugene Schroeder at the intersection of Morgan and Johnson Aves. on March 9, 2022, cops said.
Cadogan, 34, was driving a truck when he and Schroeder — who was in the bike lane — stopped alongside one another. The driver turned into the bicyclist and hit him at about 11:30 p.m., cops said at the time.
The victim’s husband continues to live with his grief in the home the couple shared.
“It’s a really tough day for me,” John Rappaport, 54, told the Daily News, explaining that notice of the arrest renewed his memories of Schroeder.
“The day it happened last year, he was returning from the gym after a workout. He was coming home,” Rappaport said in tears.
He said that Schroeder had moved to New York from California in 2000 and worked as a DJ in Manhattan and Brooklyn nightclubs.
Schroeder was one of many New Yorkers who started riding a bicycle during the COVID pandemic, Rappaport added.
“He didn’t ride a bike until the pandemic. After the pandemic was over, he started using his bike to go to work. He used it for everything,” the grieving man said.
Rappaport said he’d known for some time that police had identified a suspect in the crash.
“That’s the toughest part, to live with the information without justice being served.”
The two happened across each other by chance at a bar where Schroeder worked in 2006.
“I just knew then,” he said, calling Schroeder the love of his life.
“Nothing can bring him back. I have to live with this loss. I have to live with it every single day,” he added.
Cadogan started working for the DOT as a highway repairer in 2017, according to SeeThroughNY. He earned $59,821 in that capacity last year.
A DOT spokesman said Cadogan is currently on “nonactive” status and wasn’t working for the agency at the time of the hit-and-run.
The driver was held in custody Thursday after a judge set $7,500 bail in a Brooklyn court, according to city records.
